Should I stay or should I go?

Mallory Feltz will graduate in August with a master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Louisiana State University Sculpture Department. Her thesis, “Yours, Mine and Ours,” took center stage at the Glassell Gallery in April alongside the work of fellow sculpture grad Tyler Mackie. But by the time this article is published, Feltz will be in Cincinnati, plotting the next course in her life.

“I’m getting out of here,” Feltz explains. “I love the people here, but this city is stifling.”

The 26-year-old Ohio native explored the possibility of staying in the Red Stick, but a lack of job opportunities for herself and her boyfriend, who works in the audio-visual field, quickly shut down that search.

“Artistically, my decision to come here was a good one,” Feltz says. “My instructors, Loren Schwerd and Malcolm McClay, are energetic and inspiring. I was in a new place, and it pushed me to create things I wouldn’t have otherwise. But I want to see what else is out there.”

No doubt there are many, many coordinates across the face of the earth that offer more support, resources and opportunities for artists than the few we rest on. But in the open pursuit to make Baton Rouge a more hospitable place for the passionately right-brained, one has to wonder why people choose to leave. Or conversely, why have some of the creative decided to stay?

Whether you stay or go, the role Baton Rouge plays in that decision is an important one to analyze. With an impending 83% cut to the Decentralized Arts Funding budget, the Westdale Monument being chopped up and transported to an undisclosed location, and the state taking an ax to other cultural support structures, any artist or art administrator must carefully assess the environment he or she is in and the chances for survival.

Scott Campbell, a 30-year-old graphic designer and musician living in Atlanta, called Baton Rouge home for several years before moving away in 2008. Campbell admits his exodus wasn’t entirely career-driven, noting that his girlfriend moved to Atlanta before he did to attend school.

“I figured I’d give Atlanta a shot,” Campbell says. “I like what is happening here musically. But I still think if I stayed in Baton Rouge I would be pretty bored. It seems the older you get in Baton Rouge, the fewer creative peers you have.”

Campbell has found good work and promising opportunities in Atlanta as a self-employed graphic designer.

“I still feel a little like I’m finding my footing here in Atlanta, but I have been getting good reactions from my work. A screen printing studio, Danger Press, has opened its doors to me, allowing me to work there whenever I need to,” he says. “It’s really not very different from what I was doing in Baton Rouge, it just seems like there’s more people my age doing things that interest me, and a broader audience to appreciate them.”

Certainly, the local art-conscious battalion isn’t the strongest in numbers when compared to the 90,000 bodies swarming into Death Valley or the flocks attending Georgia’s three design schools.

“These things help Atlanta attract young creatives from all over the South,” Campbell says. “During my time in Baton Rouge, I was always concerned with supporting the arts. But with a limited audience, you can only do that for so long before feeling the need to move on.”

Other peers of Campbell’s have heeded that sentiment. His bandmate, photographer Britt King, works as a video editor in Baton Rouge but is preparing to move to New York City.

“No doubt I could continue to work as an artist if I stayed here,” King says. “Although I think whatever I create would suffer greatly from it. Baton Rouge to me seems very closed off from the rest of the world. I just want to be where the future arrives quicker.”

King and many of those within his demographic face a difficult decision between staying in Rouge and battling waning funding and—whether perceived or real—less interest in their work, or seeking out communities with more fiscal support and larger audiences.

Baton Rouge native Robert Moreland earned a large audience for his work in just a few years’ time. At 29, he had a bevy of art shows under his belt, galleries in Baton Rouge and Memphis representing him and a selection of loyal collectors. But last October he left his modest home gallery on Christian Street and moved to Blanco, Texas. There he set up shop on 40 acres of hill country, an hour outside of Austin.

“Moving out there has given me the focus I need to prove myself,” Moreland says. “I’m the low man on the totem pole in that environment, so I have to do what I’ve done in Baton Rouge out there.”

What he did here was to sell more than 100 pieces since his first show in 2002. During a recent visit back home, Moreland sold the majority of his new work within a week. His success in Baton Rouge proves to other artists that it can be done, and done quickly.

Artist, writer and LSU instructor Jacqueline Dee Parker would agree that Baton Rouge has what it takes to keep emerging artists under its shady oaks.

“The pace, scale, and general celebratory nature of life in Baton Rouge allows for a very good balance between my family life and my creative work,” Parker says. “My friendships with other artists and writers, many of whom are also parents and geographical transplants [like myself], are profoundly nourishing and fortifying, and this artistic support sustains me, too.”

Parker moved to Baton Rouge in August 1988 when her husband Dennis became Professor of Cello at LSU. “When Dennis and I arrived in Baton Rouge, I was lucky to discover a wonderful mentor in painting Professor Ed Pramuk,” Parker says. “I will always be thankful for his encouragement of my work.”

Community and close-knit support are key ingredients to retaining artistic talent, whether a recent graduate or a seasoned professor. Parker not only exalts those who have been personal pillars, but also those within the public sphere, people like the Greater Baton Rouge Arts Council’s executive director, Derek Gordon, and institutions like Baton Rouge Gallery.

And Parker is not alone in her positive assessment of being an artist or art lover in Baton Rouge. Kathryn Hunter, a printmaker and one half of the force behind Ephemeral Gallery with boyfriend and metalsmith David Cano, sees promise in the city’s embrace of local and regional talent. Her perception is particularly valuable not only because her gallery has proven to be a successful exhibit space, but also because Hunter can acknowledge the post-grad itch to leave the city.

“I came to grad school at LSU from Montana looking for a little taste of the South again,” says Hunter, who grew up in Alabama. “I moved to Lafayette right after grad school and started a letterpress business in some friends’ house.”

In 2007 Hunter returned to Baton Rouge and found the city had a healthier art scene than in years before. “The population seems eager and hungry for art in a way I didn’t notice while in grad school,” she says.

Hunter believes an artist can be a successful while living almost anywhere, and she says it isn’t what Baton Rouge should or shouldn’t become that stimulates a creative vibrancy.

“Dave and I have been amazed and happy that Baton Rouge will come out for events at Ephemeral Gallery,” she says. “It shows me that there is nothing Baton Rouge needs to be but Baton Rouge. It is in and of itself a place that is thriving in the arts and will only continue to if we let it be itself.

“We don’t need to change Baton Rouge; we need to let B.R. follow what we’re all making happen,” Hunter says. “It’s not what Baton Rouge needs to give us. It’s what we give to Baton Rouge. We just have to keep the art coming.”

For more information on these artists, visit malloryfeltz.com, scttcmpbll.com, robertmoreland.com, jacquelinedeeparker.com, and blackbirdletterpress.com.